If you get a chance, check out the Webcast from Democracy Now! for today (Monday, April 30) about the Spanish Civil War 70 years ago, the first major war against fascism, pitting the proletariat against the upper classes. More than 3,000 Americans of conscience - including 80 women - went to fight and those who survived (too few) returned to be branded as “bad” by the U.S. government.

If you know Picasso’s painting Guernica, this was iconic of that war (despite endless lies that Guernica was never massacred). It was this painting, which hangs in the United Nations, that the United States ordered “covered” the day then Secretary of State Colin Powell went before the U.N. Security Council to lie about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that never existed.

I suspect many of you, like myself, feels a great deal of anger (if not directly AT former CIA director George Tenet than) at the “truths” about the Bush Administration’s incredible mishandling (and some continue to say deliberate mishandling) coming forward with Tenet’s new book and interviews about September 11th (9-11).

I was speechless and furious watching Tenet on “60 Minutes” last night. But I recognize, too, that everyone in the Bush Administration is always expected to fall on the sword for Bush. I do not believe that this administration “invented” the Iraq war after 9-11; I think they went into office planning it. Not just to “get revenge for Bush’s daddy but to carve out Iraq’s energy resources.

I find fault with Tenet for accepting the Medal of Freedom award because he had to know it was a kiss-off. But I am far more irritated with former NSA head, now Secretary of State Condi Rice’s response who says that “we did some things right, some wrong, but I’ll address this when I write my own book!”

Hey, Condikins: you’ve taken the taxpayers’ money for many years for doing the worst job possible. Forget the book. Tell the truth NOW and resign.

I’m very pleased that the Democratic governor is finally, after three weeks, going home. But I’m surprised that the media is far more interested in the answer of why the New Jersey gov was not wearing his seatbelt than whether we’re about to attack Iran.

Not to say that the governor is above laws BUT… there are such bigger fish.

[Hint: when Bush says, as he does continually, “We work hard”, he does NOT mean hard work; he means that what little time he spends working, he does so to create as much destruction of the American ideal as humanly possible.]

Listening to the president now talking in the Rose Garden with European leaders feels a little like “alternative consciousness” because everything he says is the opposite of what he DOES. Examples:

• Resist isolationism when Bush has spearheaded this “My way or the highway” campaign
• Bush says he is of “like mind” with the Europeans on climate change, when Europe is far, far, FAR ahead of us in this area; for example, champagne producers are already looking at relocating vineyards from France because global warming is hurting their crops while Bush pays countless “experts” to insist climate change is a myth

My advice? Check out what foreign papers are saying about the Europeans’ take on Bush’s happy horseshit.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Poor construction, improper design, substandard materials and lack of maintenance have brought into question the usefulness of seven of eight U.S.-funded Iraq reconstruction projects.

So says an inspector general report that recently examined the eight reconstruction projects.

“If these projects are typical of the quality and effectiveness of operations and maintenance performance on transitioned projects, the value of the U.S. investment in Iraq reconstruction will be at risk,” said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general, in his report to Congress and the Bush Administration. “Unless corrective action is taken, the useful lives of those projects will be significantly shortened.”

In addition, 914 people — including 224 U.S. citizens — have died while working on the U.S.-funded projects, the report said.

The U.S. is spending $37 billion on Iraqi reconstruction.

What has to happen in order for us to see things aren’t going so well in Iraq? What has to happen in order for our leaders to step up and not just say that “That didn’t go so well” or “We need to do that better,” but “This is a problem. We need to fix it. Here’s how.”

Half-assed jobs like this running back four years make statements like “And I think our troops can win it” almost laughable. I don’t know if anyone truly understands what “it” is. $37 billion…

And Headline News’s Robin & Company poll this morning: Should “Bart’s parts” be shown in “The Simpsons Movie?”

Ever feel like you woke up in a running blender?

Mitt Romney recently took the Democratic presidential candidates to task for not appearing on Fox News. After all the moderator for the first Republican debate on MSNBC will be none other than Chris Matthews, Tip O’Neill’s former chief of staff. This is evidence to Romney that Republicans “have a lot more courage of our convictions.”

So much is wrong with this, that I am unsure where even to start, but here it goes. (more…)

I’m happy to announce our newest contributor, Stilicho, a law student from Pennsylvania and the Secretary of his university’s Democratic organization. He also blogs at The New New Left.

From Stilicho:

“I believe the entire world (not just physics) can be explained by Heisenberg’s Uncertaintly Principle and Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. I’m very much a product of the Seinfeld/Simpsons generation of jokes and quasi-obscure referencing. I think this has led me to a very strict Human empiricism and a perhaps more than healthy dose of doubt about everything.”

On “The New New Left”:

“The “old” left of the thirties was motivated by economic justice for the working class.  The “new” left of the sixties rallied for civil rights and against the Vietnam War.  The reaction to the revolutionary new left was the conservative resurgence that continues to this day.  But now that the conservatives are being exposed as extremists, the time has come for a new liberalism - what I like to call the “new new left”. It is from this perspective that I write.”

In The Strange Death of Liberal America I referred to our times as The Era of Bad Feelings for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who has lived through the last few years. Politics and a great deal else in our society have been imbued with a nastiness that has made vitriol the stock in trade of everyone from network commentators to bloggers. It is as if discourse and manners have become so degraded that the only way to express outrage is to be as ill-mannered as possible.

When Don Imus uttered his degrading comments about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team, the degree of public outrage provided a ray of hope that perhaps the Era of Bad Feelings might finally be reaching an end. Dick Cheney proved I was wrong! (more…)

I do so love living in a media-centric world. The past is hard to escape. From Think Progress:

October 1994 — McCain argued for the precipitous withdrawal of U.S. forces from Haiti: “In my view that does not mean as soon as order is restored to Haiti. It does not mean as soon as democracy is flourishing in Haiti. It does not mean as soon as we have established a viable nation in Haiti. As soon as possible means as soon we can get out of Haiti without losing any American lives.” [Senate Floor, 10/6/94]

October 1993 — McCain argued against giving any strategy the chance to succeed in Somalia: “Mr. President, can anyone seriously argue that another 6 months of United States forces in harm’s way means the difference between peace and prosperity in Somalia and war and starvation there? Is that very dim prospect worth one more American life? No, it is not.” [Senate Floor, 10/14/93]

Is this even a surprise? The Iraq War/Lord George lap dog didn’t agree with our involvement under a Democratic president. Surprise! And he said then exactly what we’re saying now about Iraq, exactly what he’s criticizing about the democratic party, exactly what the right wing is calling “defeatist.”

You can catch the video there as well. Brilliant. More on McCain: Blue Gal’s Photo Contest is wrapping up in a little while. And I couldn’t say no to Photoshop. John McCain is so emo.

OK, so, they’re only more than six (6) years late in getting to work on this but - hey, better late than never.

A little-known federal investigative unit has launched a probe into allegations of illegal political activity within the executive branch, including a White House office led by President Bush’s close adviser, Karl Rove.

This about Riverbend, the tenacious Baghdad blogger from Crooks and Liars just about brought me to tears:

Stilicho at The New New Left blogspot has a pretty funny, detailed recap of tonight’s debate (with an Edwards bias).  Be sure to start with his first post, Blogging the First Democratic Debate.

We’ve still got 600+ days left of Bush & Company. But why wait for January 21st, 2009 to start trying to undo some of the terrible unAmerican damage he has wrought (those rare days when he’s not on vacation)?

Join the ACLU and sign the petition to demand the return of one of the many parts of the American Constitution the Bushies flushed down toilets even faster than copies of the Quran (Koran) at Gitmo: let’s restore Habeas Corpus. And now!

I tried to sit through tonight’s first of the 2008 presidential season debates tonight but I have to admit I only lasted about 15-20 minutes before I was reminded of the sad fact that only politicians run for president. ((cough))

What was your take?

I’ve been monitoring various polls at newspaper and other news sites around the country which ask if Bush should veto bills that provide the war funding he wants but with a timetable for U.S. troop pullout from Iraq he definitely does not want.

CNN’s poll response so far is the largest, at about 150K, where 66% vote Bush should NOT veto these bills, compared with about 30% who say he should. This result mirrors most of the others, although some smaller response polls have those telling Bush NO to vetoes running higher, from 70-85%.

Naturally, however, Bush will do what he wants. He makes it abundantly clear he is in no way interested in the will - much less the vote - of the American people.

Every day I read stuff on the internets tubeage, (it’s not like a dumptruck… it’s a series of tubes you know) which cause me to reconsider what I’m reading from an instinctual disbelief. More often than not this natural bull pucky radar functions smoothly and the instinct is proven correct. But I saw a story today that made me think to myself “there is just no way this can be true”… and then the story was confirmed.   The surprising part for me was that Mitt Romney appears to espouse a position that once caused George Bush no little embarrassment, and which would be positively scandalous if any Democrat were to say it. (more…)